Piecewise tone reproduction for high dynamic range imaging

Abstract

To display high dynamic range (HDR) images onto conventional displayable devices that have low dynamic range (LDR) such as monitors and printers, we propose a piecewise tone reproduction operator with chromatic adaptation. The strong point of our operator is to reproduce displayable LDR images while maintaining a perceptual match between the real world and the displayed image. The algorithm for dynamic range reduction relies on piecewise constructs and suitable tone reproduction functions that depend on the estimations of global luminance modification and local luminance adaptation. Combined with dynamic range reduction, the proposed algorithm also applies the chromatic adaptation technique of the color appearance model in order to preserve the chromatic appearance and color consistency across scene and display environments. The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm achieves good subjective results while preserving details of the image. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm has a fast, simple and practical structure for implementation.